because they too—along with those labouring under that misconception—imagined that it meant compulsion. Thus they shared the others’ mistaken understanding, then added another error in their attempt to escape the first: denying divine decree itself! Had they not shared the understanding that it entailed compulsion, they would not have denied it!

This is precisely what the teachers and writers referred to above did. When they saw Muslims—with few exceptions—relying passively on the hadiths concerning the Mahdī and Jesus, they hastened to reject them, supposedly to free Muslims from that passive reliance! Yet they achieved nothing: on the one hand, they were unable to free them from it by doing so; on the other, they were not rightly guided in rejecting authentic hadiths.

In truth, these deniers—who read into these hadiths a supposed warrant for passive reliance that they do not convey, and therefore hasten to reject them to escape it—have combined two calamities: misguided understanding and disbelief in the text! They did, however, recognize that this understanding was itself misguided, so they rejected it by rejecting the text from which they had derived it! The common people did the reverse: they believed in the text while retaining that understanding. Each group thus possesses both guidance and misguidance. The truth lies in accepting the guidance found in each and discarding their misguidance: believing in the text without that erroneous understanding.

These two groups are just like the Muʿtazilah on the one hand and those who liken Allah to His creation on the other. The former gave the verses and hadiths concerning the divine attributes invalid interpretations that led them to deny those attributes. They were driven to this solely by their desire to escape the likening of Allah to His creation into which the latter had fallen; the Muʿtazilah themselves shared the latter’s understanding that such a likeness was implied